The Fire In Your Head
by greymcdreamysgh
Summary: MERDER. Meredith and Derek try to recover after almost losing everything. A post-S6 finale fic. Now complete!
1. Chapter 1

_She sees him laying in the bed alone tonight __  
__The only thing touching him is a crack of light __  
__Pieces of her hair are wrapped around and 'round his fingers __  
__And he reaches for her side, for any sign of her that lingers _

_

* * *

_When Cristina says that Derek is asking for her, Meredith thinks he is actually, you know, asking for her. Instead, she finds him in the ICU, with an ET tube down his throat, alone in a room that is absolutely silent except for the humming and beeping of all the machines attached to him.

All she can think for the first few minutes as she stares at him is that he looks so clean. All the blood has been wiped away, and although his hospital gown is covering them now, she watched a few hours ago as Cristina sewed a row of tiny, perfect stitches down his breastbone. The way the color is still almost completely drained from his face reminds her of when he had that stomach bug a few months ago and puked for three days straight. But all the wires and IVs streaming out of his chest and arms—well, she doesn't think she can ever get used to seeing him like that.

"Hey." His eyes are closed, and she thinks he has fallen back to sleep, but at the sound of her voice and the touch of her fingertips on his open palm, he opens his eyes.

"Hey," she says again. She sits down in the chair next to his bed and he closes his fingers around hers, just barely. "Do you remember what happened?"

He gives a slight nod, and she imagines him just waking up from surgery, remembering it all. She can see him looking up with groggy, panicked eyes at Cristina. _Do you want Meredith?_ she can hear Cristina asking. She wanted to be here as soon as he woke up, but Cristina wouldn't let her. She watched her come back into Derek's OR with her bloody scrub pants, but said nothing when Meredith stood at the table, Derek's head in her hands, and watched her finish the surgery. But after she finished, and the lockdown was lifted, and the nurses wheeled him into recovery, Cristina led her quietly to the showers. By that point, Meredith barely knew what was happening anymore.

It seems like she needed all of her energy, all her adrenaline, to get through the past few hours, and now she has nothing left. Derek is all cleaned up, but she still feels like she has blood everywhere. She has washed so much of it down the drain, but still, it keeps coming. She keeps cramping, and everything keeps spilling out. It doesn't hurt as much anymore, now that it isn't a surprise. She knows its normal, but she has never felt emptier in her life.

"Cristina did such a good job on your surgery. You're going to be ok."

Tears well up in his eyes. He blinks, and they spill over, but he's too weak to lift his hand to wipe them away so she does it for him. She doesn't tell him any of the rest of it. Not yet. She doesn't even know how to start, how to tell him that Cristina kept operating even with a gun pointed at her head; that Jackson's quick thinking kept them all alive; that she doesn't know how many people are dead; that the only reason she isn't among them is because a few hours ago, he was going to be a father; that he isn't going to be one anymore.

At first, she doesn't want to touch him. He has a tube down his throat; if she is hurting him, he wouldn't be able to tell her. But when she pulls her fingers from his hand, he musters up whatever strength he has to squeeze them harder, to keep them there. So she leans forward a little more, holds his hand more firmly in hers, and strokes his hair over and over. And she keeps talking, for God knows how long, about French doors, and the fireplace in the master bedroom, and the view from the living room window, overlooking the city.

* * *

It's dark outside when he starts fighting the tube. He wants it out, and it feels like the nurse simply cannot get here fast enough. Though everything else still feels hazy and aching, the tube now feels like a very distinct intrusion. It's taking too long. He wants Meredith to pull it out, but she doesn't. She's talking to him, trying to keep him calm, but he can sense that she's panicking too and he can't listen to what she's saying. They must be short-staffed; who would stay here after a day like today? That must be why it's taking so long.

Suddenly, the nurse is there. He feels like maybe he knows her, but he can't remember her name. And then she's asking him to cough and the tube is coming up, scraping his throat on the way out. He's seen it a million times, extubated a million patients, but it's never been done to him before. Now he knows why they complain about it so much.

He wants something to drink, but he feels like swallowing anything would hurt too much for it to be worth it. It would take too many words to tell Meredith that his back hurts and his incision site hurts and that everything feels like too much. It's too many words to state the obvious. I had a bullet in my chest. I almost died.

She looks drained—exhausted, but also like all the blood has gone from her face. It's too hard to tell her that, it's too hard to even make his face look concerned, but when the nurse steps away and Meredith moves closer again, he pushes out a hoarse and tired, "Hi."

She kisses him. It's the only thing that doesn't hurt.

* * *

She knows it's the second time Derek's mother has gotten a phone call like this.

"Mrs. Shepherd?" she says, her voice wobbly and weak. "It's Meredith. Meredith Grey. Derek's— (_Has he told his family that they got married?_) —It's Meredith Grey. I'm sorry to call so late."

"Meredith, it's ok," she replies, trying to be cheerful. "I'm sure you think we're all crazy for calling so much, and I know Derek must be so busy dealing with all this. We've been watching the news and it looks absolutely horrible so of course we all couldn't help but worry a little. Derek's phone must have nine or ten missed calls."

Derek's phone has sixteen missed calls. But at the moment, she can't think about returning any of them except this one.

"Derek." She doesn't know how to say this; it still sounds so strange. She knows she is probably going to scare his mother to death, but she can't help but burst into tears when she tells her, "Derek's been shot."

She tries to collect herself, to keep talking before his mother fears the worst, and she keeps going. "He's alive. He's out of surgery, and he's alive. He's awake and breathing on his own and talking a little, but he was shot in the chest."

She doesn't tell her all the grisly details, because by this point, Carolyn is crying too. She says she's getting on a plane, and Meredith asks her, if she wouldn't mind, to please call his sisters. She can't repeat this four more times.

* * *

The first night after surgery, he can't sleep. He keeps his eyes closed and tries to relax, and between the pain meds and the reality of being shot, he still feels pretty out of it. But he's still listening to everything around him, and he knows Meredith is still awake too by the way that she's breathing. He wishes that she could get in bed with him, but for now, there's just too many wires, too many IVs, and he feels almost too split open to move. He can't hold her and maybe that's the worst part.

He hears the door slide open and listens to Meredith walk gingerly across the tile. "How is he doing?" Cristina asks.

She takes a few steps into the room but goes no further. She's been in a few times since they moved him here, just checking on him as his surgeon, but she's made it a point not to stay long.

"He's stable. Sleeping."

"How are you?"

"I'm ok."

"Take these," Cristina says. "Do you need some more pillows? Are you ok?"

"I'm fine," Meredith says, but he hears her take a long drink of water and swallow. "How's Owen?"

"He's still here, working. His shoulder looks fine."

"Good. That's good."

"We got the casualty list."

Even though he knows that his heart is ok, he has a flash of worry that it might break all over again. There's a casualty list? The sound of gunshots comes back to him, not so much the popping of the bullets being fired but the screaming. He hears Meredith screaming, and then, just for a moment, he hears his sister, he hears himself.

"Reed and Charles are dead," Cristina says. "Lots of others." Meredith sucks in her breath at that, but when Cristina tells her that Alex has been shot, he hears her start crying again. "He's ok," Cristina assures her, and he feels such relief in knowing that Meredith won't lose another friend this year. "Everybody else is ok. All of our people are anyway."

He wants to go to her. He hates it when she cries, but Cristina has it covered. They've been married almost a year, but it still feels like sometimes Cristina knows better than he does how to take care of her.

"I should go see Alex," Meredith says.

"He's at Seattle Pres. Mark and Lexie kept him alive until Teddy could get him over there to operate. Lexie's with him," Cristina assures her.

"Ok," Meredith says. She keeps repeating it in little whispers—"Ok, ok, ok,"— like she doesn't know what else to say. She's still choked up, but she's not sobbing anymore. "I should let you go; I'm sure you're busy."

"Alex, Owen, and Derek are the only ones who got shot and are still alive," Cristina says. "I'm not busy. But you should sleep."

"I'm fine," Meredith repeats, but Cristina ignores her.

"Here, I'll help you," she says. She moves in a little further and, as quietly as she can, she unfolds the armchair next to his bed into the pull-out bed meant for visitors. He can hear Cristina patting pillows onto the chair, four in all. "This one is for your L-spine. Do you need more blankets?"

"No."

Cristina waits a moment, but finally says, with sympathy in her voice deep enough so that even he can hear it, "Page me if you need me."

* * *

The first night after surgery, she can't sleep. Cristina's loaded her up with pillows and painkillers, but it still hurts, deeper than she ever thought it could, and between all the bleeding and making sure Derek is still breathing, it's been hard to close her eyes. She knows she's safe now, and that Derek's safe, and she can even imagine a day in the distant future when it will all feel ok again. But for right now, she's lost her sense of security and a baby she didn't know she wanted all in one day, and that is completely overwhelming.

In her mind, she can't stop going over it all. She wonders how far along she was and what it would have been like to tell him. She knows Cristina gives Derek a hard time, but she has to admit to herself that Cristina was probably right—Derek would have been so happy that he would have cried. She's still kind of shocked at the way her heart feels like it's been ripped from her body, when there was a time not long ago that she would be feeling a guilty sort of relief right now.

She's trying to keep track of the bleeding, in case it's too much, in case she can't get everything out on her own, but so far, it seems like it's been ok. Still, even though she's seen a lot of blood in her life, it's kind of scary to pass clots like this.

She feels like if she thinks too much about the baby, she'll go crazy. It's scaring her, how much she actually _misses _it. That tiny little surprise has now been gone more hours than she knew it was there at all. The rational part of her knows that it could have happened this way anyway, in a week or maybe two. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with watching a man try to murder her husband, and it might not have anything to do with allowing a gun to be pointed at her own heart either. But either way, she wishes that she could stop imagining a wrinkly little pink baby with a head full of black hair.

In the moments that her mind wanders from the baby, she keeps reliving Derek getting shot. She can still feel the blood bubble out under her hands no matter how hard she presses on his chest. And she can't forget the sight of Derek's heart, unmoving in his chest, while Cristina worked.

She thinks that maybe she should have told him about the baby before his surgery. When she was begging him to stay conscious, when he was lying on the floor and she couldn't hold his hand because she needed both of hers to hold his blood in. Or maybe after she kissed him but before she put him under. She could have just whispered it to him while they were alone. He is a fatherless boy. He would have fought even harder to live if he knew. But he made it through anyway, and the fact that Derek doesn't have a father isn't relevant anymore. She doesn't know how to tell him now.

* * *

Nobody has been in to visit him yet, and he has to keep reminding himself that if his friends were dead, Cristina would have told Meredith last night.

His mother arrives a little after six in the morning, looking stressed and frantic. She hugs Meredith, maybe because she's relieved it wasn't both of them or maybe just because she knows she can't hug her son without hurting him.

He feels like he can talk now, but when he tries, it's still hard to get any words out. Meredith holds a cup with a plastic straw against his lips, and he takes two meager sips of water.

He hasn't wanted to eat anything yet, but she's been trying to get him to drink a little since five, when Cristina rounded on him and told Meredith that he should start taking liquids.

"Mom," he croaks. He hasn't seen that exact teary smile since he was twelve years old, the last time she was grateful that he hadn't been killed. Thirty years later, the only difference this time is that he hadn't walked away from a shooting unharmed.

* * *

Derek's main nurse, Kate, brings in an incentive spirometer with his breakfast tray, and he looks like he has no interest in dealing with either.

"Sorry," she says. "Doctor's orders. You don't have to eat the breakfast, though you should have a few bites if you feel like you want to. But you do have to do this."

Kate holds up the spirometer, and Derek groans. It's a sound of displeasure, but at least it's a sound. He has been so quiet since he woke up from surgery, even though his mom is here and talking. He really must feel terrible; he'd normally be falling over himself to run interference and put her at ease.

"Do you need some help sitting up?" Kate asks.

He can't quite leverage himself in the right way. But he tries to do it himself before he admits that he does need some help. Carolyn looks thoroughly freaked out at the sight of her grown son only able to lift his head, and looks too scared to step up to help Kate. Meredith's not sure if she can or should be helping to lift him, but he needs to take some deep breaths and he needs to cough and to do that, he's got to be upright. Fortunately, Kate does most of the work and she gets away with keeping his IVs and wires in order, and simply easing him forward with a gentle hand on his back.

She winces at the pain in her abdomen—she hasn't wanted to move much either—and perches on the bed next to him as Kate hands him the spirometer and asks him to breathe. She can tell that he thinks its stupid, but he does it anyway, ten times in a row.

"That's great, Dr. Shepherd. Good job." She's thankful that Kate is calling him Dr. Shepherd. She thinks it makes him feel like more of a man, or at least more of the person he is and less of of the patient he has become. He needs that, especially now.

"I need you to cough for me a little bit," Kate says, "We need your lungs to stay clear."

Meredith reaches behind her for one of his pillows and holds it vertically against his chest, bracing it against his incision for support. "You have to cough," she whispers, and he does, halfheartedly. They need him to give something deeper, more bellowing, but she knows that the little bit he is able to give is already rattling against his incision and hurting him. She holds the pillow a little more firmly to him, but doesn't press against him with it. She takes one of his hands in hers and wraps the other around his back, her hand lying gently against the ridges of his spine, exposed from the open back of his hospital gown.

"Squeeze when it hurts," she whispers, and for a second, she imagines him saying those words to her, only she's the one dressed in a hospital gown and weak with pain. In her imagination, when he says it to her, it's because they are feeling hopeful, not helpless.

He coughs louder this time, holding onto her fingers with a tightly clenched fist. "That's good," she says. "Can you do it one more time?"

He does it again, she knows only because she's touching him and she is asking him to. But when he says, "No more. It hurts," the anger coils up inside her and for a second, she feels like she can't breathe.

* * *

He still needs help sitting up on later that day when they try again, but he finally gets out of bed and takes a few tentative steps around his room with Meredith's help. He knows he's supposed to be walking a little anyway, but peeing in a bedpan again is not something he's willing to do again, so it's extra motivation to get up.

His mother is gone, sent back to their house to pick up some of his things to bring back to the hospital. He's grateful that she's there, but he can tell she's feeling useless, and truthfully, he wants Meredith more than anyone else right now.

His sisters have been calling his phone and his mother's phone all day, but he hasn't talked to any of them except Amelia, who absolutely insisted on speaking to him directly. As soon as she heard his voice, she immediately burst into tears and he spent most of the conversation comforting her. He figures its probably for the best that they couldn't get too many words in because the only words that matter are the ones that neither can bring themselves to say: _How could this happen to our family again? _

Meredith waits outside the bathroom door while he announces that he is not an invalid. She reminds him that getting shot justifies a little hovering, and he's thankful that it doesn't hurt to talk anymore. Even though she's quieter than usual, he's still missed the feeling, however remote, of normalcy, and conversation is part of that.

He can't stop thinking about the shooting, and not just the moment when he was shot (though Gary Clarke pulling the trigger and sending a bullet straight toward his heart is something he knows he will never forget). He keeps remembering April Kepner, panicking and covered in blood in his office. He keeps reminding himself not to call her Amelia when or if he ever talks about this later. He wonders if he could have done something differently, anywhere along the timeline of when his life and Gary Clarke's intertwined. He should be at his staff's funerals; they'll probably start within the next day or so. He should talk to his staff, to his hospital. There should probably be some sort of stirring speech given, and he hopes all of the people he's supposed to be leading will understand that all he can do right now is walk arm in arm with his wife, and even that takes a herculean effort.

"What did you want to tell me before?" he asks.

She's got an arm looped around his waist, and they're walking slowly back to his room. "What are you talking about?"

"Before." He doesn't know what to say. It still feels too surreal to say 'Before I got shot' but it doesn't feel true enough to say something like 'Before the lockdown.' So he just repeats himself, "Before," and hopes that she'll understand. "You came into my office and said you had some stuff to tell me."

"Oh," she replies. She winces just a little, quick enough to almost hide it from him, but he doesn't say anything. "It just seemed like you were having a bad day so I was going to try to cheer you up."

He nods. "The dirty sex would have helped a lot."

She laughs, and he wants to take some of his weight off her while they walk, but he's not sure he can yet.

* * *

That afternoon, she showers while Derek sleeps and Carolyn makes phone calls. She thinks she's done pretty well so far, holding it together in front of him and in front of his mother. She still wants to tell him, but not while his mother is here, and not while he is barely able to stand unassisted. It would have been his firstborn child, a baby that he wanted for a long time, a part of them, and for all those reasons, he of course deserves to know. But it feels like too much to hold in, and too much to bear all by herself. And for those reasons, he has to know.

It's only been a day but she's not bouncing back. In the shower, as blood and water stream down her legs, she cries in heavy, gulping sobs. It hurts kind of like a period, only worse, and kind of like a broken heart, only worse. Cristina is helping her manage the cramping, but she doesn't think she's doing as well with the rest of it.

Now that she knows she's definitely alone, she can't make herself stop crying for what she lost. In her head, she feels so mixed up, going back and forth between grief and gratitude so quickly that her head is spinning with it. She thinks of her hospital, of the people she loves, peppered with bullet holes. Her friends are alive. Her husband is alive. That should be more than enough for anyone. Except—she was ready when she didn't think she ever could be, and she wanted that baby when she didn't think she ever would. And that is just so unfair that she wants to scream.


	2. Chapter 2

_And she says, You are not alone  
Laying in the light  
Put out the fire in your head  
And lay with me tonight_

_

* * *

_

He's discharged a week after the shooting. His mother left yesterday after begging him to come home more, and now he's more than ready to get out of here. It's been getting easier to breathe, and easier to stand on his own two feet, at least most of the time. Sometimes though, when he actually thinks about the eight-inch incision in the middle of his chest and why it's there, he still feels breathless and weak.

He wishes everything would go back to normal, that he could fast-forward through the six to twelve weeks of recovery time he's looking at as soon as they leave here, that he could get back to being the person and the husband and the doctor that he was before. He hates knowing that he can never go all the way back, that a gun tends to change everything from the inside out.

"I have no idea how we're going to get all this stuff home," Meredith says. She's packing his things for him, and looking around at all the flowers and cards from well-wishers.

She has barely left his side since it happened. There was one time, a few days ago, that she left for about two hours, but he was getting an MRI for most of that time anyway. Other than that, she's been eating all of her meals with him, showering in the residents' lounge or in his bathroom, and sleeping in that chair for the past seven days.

He wonders when she will want to, or have to, go back to work. Part of him doesn't want her to ever leave. It's easier when she's here, and she makes everything hurt a little less. But when he looks at her—really looks at her—he can tell that though she's putting up a good front, her eyes are tired, and that constantly being in this hospital room with him must be making her relive everything all the time. She's trying for his sake, but he knows she's not herself. It sounds bad because he's the one who got shot, but he would trade places with her. Watching her almost die was far worse than anything he's going through now.

"I guess it would seem ungrateful if we left some of it here," he says. It's nice to feel loved, or at least nice to know that people are happy that he didn't die, but she's right; they'll need some extra hands to move all of the vases out.

"Yeah, we'll have to figure something out. Your job's so political. We can't offend anyone."

Instantly, her expression changes, like she feels like she has said the wrong thing. "I mean," she trails off. "That was stupid."

"No, it wasn't," he says. Good or bad, everything that happened in the surgical wing was credited to him. It's why he's lying in this bed right now in the first place. Still, her face looks like it's about to break. She hasn't cried since before his surgery and he doesn't want to be the one to make her, so he tries to steer the conversation back. "Maybe Kate can find a box somewhere. We can put a couple vases in at once."

She smiles and he knows it's ok again. "Very resourceful, Dr. Shepherd," she says. "You need to take your Percocet before we leave so you're good for the car ride."

They bring a wheelchair for him a little while later and he can't help but roll his eyes. They're, of course, worried that he might fall on hospital property, a concern he finds a little ridiculous considering he's already been gunned down on hospital property. He goes along with it though, partly because Meredith looks exhausted and she would kill him if he didn't use the chair, but also because, truthfully, he _is_ a little tired and it is a long walk to the front door from here.

She drives so slowly on the way home, taking care to avoid potholes and sharp turns. They'll be the only ones home for another day or two; Alex lost a lot of blood at the scene and they don't expect him to be discharged for at least another few days. When they get to the house, she looks at the steps leading to the front door kind of helplessly, like she forgot they were there. He's feeling a little stronger every day, but he hasn't tried stairs yet.

"It's ok," he tells her. "We'll just do one at a time."

* * *

"Do you want me to get in there with you?" she asks, helping him step over the side of the tub and into the shower.

"I'm ok," he says, but she's not convinced. It took them ten minutes to walk up the stairs, into the house, and upstairs to the bedroom. He won't have to go anywhere else for awhile, but she can tell that it's taken a lot out of him. If he wants to shower, that's fine, but it won't stop her from worrying that he might fall.

"Are you sure?"

"In a few weeks, you can take all the showers with me that you want. In fact, you should plan on being naked in and out of the shower as much as possible. But for now, I'm ok."

It's a pride thing. She gets it; she's already made him use the wheelchair and she's had to help him climb the steps. He's still putting some of his weight on her when he walks, even though it's not as much as it was even a few days ago and she can tell he's trying not to do it at all.

"I'll wait outside then," she says. "Mark is coming over in a little while." She's talking over the rush of the water and standing right by the door. "I have to run some errands."

She still doesn't know how to tell him that she actually needs to go back to the hospital in an hour to follow up with her OB-GYN after the D&C she got three days ago. She doesn't know why she feels guilty about needing the procedure in the first place; she told her doctor how much she was still bleeding and her doctor told her that she needed to have it done, but she wishes she could have just handled it by herself.

She knows she doesn't look well. She still doesn't _feel _well, but she pushes through. After the D&C, it's been more emotionally than physically draining, and it helps her to focus on the things she can fix. Now that she knows he's not going to throw a clot or develop a post-op infection, she wants to tell him even more. She still can't get this imagined baby out of her mind, and it feels a little selfish to admit because she's not the one who just got shot, but she needs him to comfort her. She just doesn't know what to say or how to begin.

"I don't need a babysitter, Meredith."

"I know," she assures him, "But you can't drive and you need your prescriptions filled. And he wants to see you anyway."

In the end, Derek relents because he has no choice. She leaves him with Mark, goes back to the hospital, and sits in resigned silence on the exam table in her OB-GYN's office.

She's still bleeding, which is normal. The tests she had done after the D&C show that she was about six weeks pregnant and that a miscarriage in the first trimester isn't normal, per se, but it's not uncommon. And when she tells the doctor that she sometimes can't stop crying, she finds out that that's normal too, apparently.

There is something else that she doesn't say—that despite having a dead mother and an absent father, this is the first time she thinks she's ever felt real grief—because she thinks it makes her sound terrible and possibly crazy.

The whole thing doesn't take long. Her doctor tells her how sorry she is for her loss, and for everything that's happened. She reminds her that when her period comes back in a few weeks, she can try to get pregnant again and there's no reason why everything won't be fine the second time.  
_  
_Back at home, he asks her if she's ok. Mark has left, and she's changing his bandages for him, but she can't look him in the eye because if she does, she knows she'll start sobbing again.

"Meredith."

She finishes with his bandages, gently taping clean gauze over his incision, and tries on her best smile for him. "Do you need anything? Something to drink?"

"Meredith," he says again, in that begging way that can get her to do almost anything. She looks up at him, and she knows she can't keep it from him anymore.

"I have to tell you something."

He looks like he doesn't know what to expect, but he nods anyway. "The day you got shot," she begins, watching him for signs of distress. He swallows, and she can tell he's expecting grisly details of the shooting, to learn what else she might have seen that day. She sighs, and decides that she has to just get it over with. "The day you got shot, I took a pregnancy test," she says. "And it was positive."

"You're pregnant?" he asks. He has hope in his voice for the first time in a week. She wants so badly to say yes; this is what it should have been like when he came home from work that night.

"I had a miscarriage."

He is stunned for a second, but his face crumples almost immediately, and he covers his eyes with both hands. When she hears him start crying, she wells up. She's standing because she doesn't know what else to do, and he's crying exactly the way she does whenever she's alone and thinking about it. He moans, and when he takes his hands away, his eyes are red and full of tears. "When?" he asks in a broken voice.

"The same day. While you were in surgery. That was the thing I wanted to tell you before, that I was pregnant."

He's sobbing now. She's _never _seen him cry like this. He was shot, he won't be able to work for three months, and the man who tried to murder him killed a dozen of his colleagues. Through all that, and through all of his painful recovery so far, he hasn't cried like this once. But this is the one thing that's been taken away from him that he can't bear.

"Are you ok?" he asks.

"Yeah." She's crying now too, but she manages to tell him the rest. "I was trying to do it myself, but I had a D&C a few days ago. I went back today, and the doctor said that we can try again, but I just..."

With great effort, he moves his body closer to the center of the bed, and she crawls in next to him. He wraps an arm around her, and she lays her head on his shoulder. She embraces him fully for the first time since all of this happened, taking care not to put any weight on his incision site, and he kisses her lips and then the top of her head. They cry together.

She doesn't know what else to say. Now that he knows, part of her feels like telling him has been cathartic, but part of her is devastated all over again for breaking his heart when it was just starting to heal.

_

* * *

_

He goes over it and over it in his mind what feels like a hundred times a day. But no matter how he looks at it, and no matter how much time gets between him and when he found out, he can't see it any other way. It's just not fair.

It's hard to communicate what he's feeling without the fear of sounding ungrateful or selfish. So much of what happened is his fault, and yet he's managed to get out alive when other people who had absolutely nothing to do with Allison Clarke's case did not. His own wife is alive and, two weeks after surgery, he's making good progress in his recovery. He can understand how it might be difficult for someone to sympathize over the loss of a baby he just found out about a week ago. If they were telling people, that is.

Meredith hasn't gone back to work yet. It doesn't seem like she wants to, and he hasn't pushed the issue. They've been spending a lot of time lying in bed together, sometimes talking (though not about anything truly substantial) and sometimes not. Lately, it feels like they say more to each other in those times when they're quiet. In any case, he now understands how bored she was after her liver surgery; if he had to spend all day in bed by himself, he thinks he'd go out of his mind within 48 hours.

Not that he doesn't already feel like he's going out of his mind sometimes. His sleep isn't very restful, something he would normally blame on the surgery, but the kinds of dreams he's been having suggest otherwise. They're usually quick, blurry, and disjointed, and he can't quite remember them as well as he wants to when he wakes up. He watches his dad die almost every night, but he can't figure out if he's in the store or in the hospital; it looks like the store, but it feels like the hospital. And he sees Amelia, but he gets confused, because sometimes Amelia is eight years old and sometimes she's the adult she is now. And sometimes he thinks she's Amelia, but then he realizes instinctively that the child he's looking at isn't his sister but his own child. In his dreams, it doesn't matter whether Gary Clarke is the shooter or if it's the two guys who murdered his dad. He never gets shot in his dreams; it's always everybody else, and they look up at him, expecting him to save them, and he can't.

He doesn't tell her this because he thinks she might take it the wrong way, but the way Meredith has been grieving has surprised him a little. She cries out of nowhere sometimes; not a lot, but sometimes tears just well up in her eyes and she can't stop them. They have barely talked about it in any great detail since she first told him, but he had no idea she wanted a baby this badly. He doesn't think she had any idea either.

He has had plenty of time in the past two weeks to go over every aspect of Mrs. Clarke's case and he thinks he's got it pretty well narrowed down. He shouldn't have been so fucking cavalier during the deposition, or he should have worked harder to not come off that way. He should have perjured himself if he had to. Anything rather than admit to a man who was calling him a murderer that it had taken him less than a minute to decide that his wife had no chance of a meaningful recovery. He knows that there was truly nothing he could have anticipated or done differently regarding the patient herself—he is confident of that much—but he could have done things differently in the aftermath. He had a chance to talk _this _shooter down _before _he ever pulled the trigger, before he ever even bought the gun, and he failed to recognize that opportunity.

When his father died, everyone who heard the story was horrified that a man could be murdered in front of two of his young children. And everyone who came in contact with him as a stunned twelve-year-old told him that there was absolutely nothing he could have done. And they were right. He was a child and in a split-second, one guy put a bullet in his dad's head and the other took the watch off his wrist, and just like that, they were gone. There was no time to do anything, and even at twelve, he understood that much. But that was not the case this time.

He can't shake the feeling that now there is blood on his hands. He hasn't told Meredith this because he knows she'll tell him that he's crazy, that he's not the one who brought a gun into the hospital with the intent to kill. He can't tell anyone the other part because there are twelve dead bodies and he doesn't want to seem callous, but the guilt he feels over losing this baby is enough to make his heart almost explode. Everything after he took the bullet is a little hazy in his memory, but he can clearly recall how wracked with terror Meredith's face was. He remembers her, hysterical with his blood on her hands, trying to talk him in to staying alive. And he knows there's other stuff that no one has told him yet, stuff that happened while he was in surgery. The rational part of him knows that, if Meredith had any testing done, it would have probably shown that there was something wrong with the embryo, either genetically or with its implantation. But he is sick of being rational. He also knows now that she had been having significant morning sickness for a week before the shooting. He can't help but think that her body was in it for the long haul until she thought that he, and everybody else she loved, was going to die.

The grief is the most emotionally difficult part, but the anger he feels at what happened is the most all-consuming. Sometimes, he finds himself absolutely furious that another man with a gun could take something _else _away from him. Sometimes, he feels so bitter that so many parts of his life do not feel like they are the way they should be. He is fatherless and childless and that seems so unjust that he wants to scream. When he tries to calm himself down, reminding himself that he still has Meredith, that she is without a doubt the love of his life, and that they are both alive, the guilt takes over until it turns into anger again.

Despite everything, there are moments, however brief, when all of this seems clear and manageable. But there are many more moments in which it feels like there is simply not enough room inside for him to feel all of these emotions at one time.

* * *

She goes back to work three weeks after the shooting, partly because her family medical leave policy dictates that she kind of has to, and partly because she feels like if she doesn't start to at least try to reclaim her life, she is going to go insane.

When she's in the OR, assisting Owen on a procedure to repair a car crash victim's massive internal bleeding, for awhile she forgets everything else. For those few hours, as long as she doesn't think too much about the look on Owen's face when he's watching her and he thinks she doesn't notice, everything feels normal. Surgery is a very good distraction, and it's a good way—the only way lately—to feel just a little bit powerful.

Cristina had an early surgery too, a CABG with Teddy. When she finishes, Cristina texts her, "Lunch at 1?"

She's been checking on her a lot ever since the shooting, even just to confirm that they will still be doing the same things they do every other day.

It's weird without Alex at work. She knows he's coming back eventually, but when it's only her and Cristina there, it's just a painful reminder of how everybody keeps dying or almost dying.

Cristina's waiting for her at one o'clock. They eat the same lunches they always eat, and even sit at the same table, like they're trying to put everything back the way it was.

"So how are you?"

Cristina's never said the word 'miscarriage' to Meredith aloud, even though she asks how she is doing every day. Technically, it's happened to her before, so the potential for commiseration is there. Only Cristina had been pregnant as the result of a secret relationship with an older guy she barely knew. She didn't want kids then, and she still doesn't now, three years later. With Meredith, Cristina knows its different and she's trying to be sensitive to that.

"I'm doing better."

Her heart's still broken, but if she knows how to do anything reasonably well, it's keep going.

"How is the first week back going?"

She sighs. "I don't want to use either of those two ORs. I've been avoiding them. And that supply closet. And the catwalk. There's a whole list of places I don't want to go. I haven't been to his office either."

"Nothing happened in his office though."

Cristina doesn't try to convince Meredith that avoiding specific places is somewhat irrational and almost impossible considering the scope of the crime. She simply points out which places should still be safe.

"I know. It's just...I don't know. I don't want to go there."

"Has he asked you to?"

"He wants to try to work from home so he's asked for some stuff, yeah."

"He's a surgeon. Working from home is kind of impossible."

"I know. But he thinks there's administrative stuff he can do. I don't know how much longer I can get by with telling him that he needs to rest and recover, not work."

"Well it's not like you're lying. He does need time to recover."

"I know. And I think he knows it too. I think he's just feeling a little useless right now. He's tired of lying around the house."

They share a bed; she knows that he's angry and restless. He's healed to the point where he can hold her the way they used to when they go to sleep, but even though they start out that way every night, they hardly ever wake up that way. He tosses and turns, hard enough to wake her up and, in the beginning, make her worry that he will rip a stitch. She asks him about his nightmares (she doesn't need to ask _if _he's having them; she hears his breathing quicken and she hears him even whimper sometimes), and he tries to tell her the best he can but he can't always remember.

She's grateful for the exhaustion that work brings because it makes her too tired to dream. Right after the shooting, her own dreams were extremely vivid. It's easier to keep going when she doesn't have to see Derek getting shot every night, she doesn't have to relive falling into the Elliott Bay (even though she fights to swim this time), and she doesn't have to see what she instinctively knows to be the baby's face.

"When is he coming back to work?"

"Not for a few more weeks. Teddy has to clear him first."

He's recovering well, and his pain is under control, but he doesn't have anywhere near the stamina he needs to resume his old schedule. She knows she should be thankful because she could be a widow right now on top of everything else, and she _is _thankful. Except sometimes it's hard to make herself feel that way when she sees how much Derek is clearly struggling.

"Do you have to go back to the doctor at all?" she asks.

"Not really. She wants me to check in when we start trying again, but that's it."

"I thought you said you weren't trying."

"No, no, that time, we weren't. But next time."

"There's going to be a next time?"

"I want there to be."

She wants a baby. It's amazing to her, how _sure _she is now, how willing she is to put aside everything that used to scare to her to death. Over the past year or so, she had started to think about it, just in the abstract maybe-someday kind of way. She thought that maybe one day, if she ever could psych herself up to do it, they'd make a gorgeous baby and hopefully she could figure out how not to screw it up along the way. She assumed that she would need Derek's help a lot and she would consult several books and maybe she could muddle through until she learned how to be a mother. It was impossible for her to believe that she had any sort of instinct or natural inclination that might lend itself to her parenting endeavors.

She thinks back to taking the pregnancy test and how it felt to let the results set in. It was a confused, speechless sort of happiness, but it was definitely happiness. She wants that feeling back, and the fear and the uncertainty doesn't matter anymore. She's no longer thinking that she'll try to figure it out; she's thinking that she _will _figure it out because she has to. It's hard to explain the joy and the excitement and the love that she felt, even to herself, but she knows that she can't go the rest of her life without feeling it again. That was only supposed to be the beginning. It was supposed to get even better than that.

* * *

He has to keep reminding himself that she means well. For someone who used to spook so easily, she has the commitment thing down pat now. Truly, he couldn't ask for better care or for someone more capable of looking out for him. She anticipates his every need, reminds him to take his medicine, and tries to be as mindful as she can of his pride and his desire to do things for himself. The one need she either can't or won't indulge is the need to sometimes just be left alone.

She's helping him up the stairs after dinner, just standing next to him while he climbs. He's still pretty slow, but he's not going to fall.

"I'm fine, Meredith," he says, in a voice that comes out as more of a growl than he really means it to. He doesn't tell her that he's been trying to do the stairs every day while she's at work without help.

"I know," she says blandly, but she doesn't move.

He's sick of this bedroom, sick of this whole house, and sick of knowing that he can't leave because he won't be cleared to drive for another three weeks.

She follows him in. He looks at her, and before he can stop himself, he gives her a look that he knows says quite plainly, "I am annoyed."

She's taken aback and stops at the door frame. "Do you not want me here?"

"I'm not a complete invalid."

"I know you're not."

"I'm three weeks post-op. I don't need to be helped up the stairs and tucked into bed. I'm not dying."

She's hurt for a second, but then she snaps back. "Yeah, well, for awhile, I thought you were," she says. "You flat-lined on the table. So you'll have to deal with a little hovering, Derek."

"I flat-lined on the table?" he asks. He hasn't asked for the details of his surgery; until now, he assumed that despite it being a difficult repair, it had gone well.

"Yes. Well, no. Not really."

"Meredith?" She looks a little flustered, and he steps further into their bedroom, silently inviting her back in.

"Forget it," she says, trying to brush it off. "I'm sorry for hovering. I know you're doing better, but I just want to make sure you're ok. Sometimes I still can't believe that I didn't lose you."

That much of it, he understands. For weeks after the ferry accident, he couldn't stop picturing her cold and blue. He was hyper-conscious of every time she took a breath.

"Meredith, what happened while I was in surgery?"

They sit down on the bed and she stares at him for a good twenty seconds before she sighs and starts talking. He can tell that the only reason she's decided to tell him the rest is because she thinks he's well enough to handle it. He feels well enough to handle it until she starts telling him what happened.

"I really thought you were dead," she says. "You were flat-lining for a minute, but it turned out that Jackson had just disconnected your monitors. So it looked like you were dead, but you weren't. You were fine all through surgery; Cristina did a great job. I just didn't know that he had done that."

"Why did he disconnect the wires?"

She swallows, like part of her is regretting telling this story. "Because Gary Clarke was in the OR. He was gone when I got to you on the catwalk, but I guess he came back and saw that your body wasn't there, so he went looking for you. I didn't know he was there at first—Cristina wouldn't let me be in there with you—but then Owen found us and went in to check on you, and when he didn't come back out, I thought something was wrong with you. So I got up to look, and that's how I knew."

"I can't believe Owen was up and walking around with a GSW through the shoulder. I mean, I can, but to knowingly walk in and try to deal with the guy again is amazing."

"He hadn't already shot Owen when he went in there. He shot him while he was in the OR with you because he was trying to protect Cristina." She tries to smile even though it looks so forced. "You can't say she doesn't care about you because she kept operating even though she had a gun pointed at her."

He's absolutely humbled by Cristina's bravery and dedication, not just to surgery, but to his family. He's stunned by everyone else in the room too, who chose to save his life at the very real risk to their own.

She takes a deep breath and tries to steady her voice. "So that's why I thought you were dead."

"Because Avery disconnected my monitor?"

"Yeah. I was begging them not to stop operating. I really didn't know you were still alive until after he left, so I guess I gave a pretty convincing performance."

"Meredith," he sighs. She's got tears in her eyes but she's not touching him because he asked her not to. He understands now how close he came to dying, or how close he could have come to waking up and finding out his wife had been killed. His mind is working frantically to put the pieces together, and a flicker of realization comes to him: If a woman is hysterically pleading for a man's life, she is probably in love with him. Gary Clarke would have been smart enough to realize this, and yet here she was, unharmed.

"How did you get him not to shoot you?" he asks.

"What do you mean?"

He puts his head in hands. He feels relief right now, if only because he knows he could have lost even more than he already has, and if Meredith were gone, he wouldn't want to live. "He must have known you're my wife," he says. "How are you alive right now?"

Some of her tears spill over and she wipes them away. "Cristina told him I was pregnant."

"What?"

"He had the gun pointed right at me. I _told _him to shoot me instead. But Cristina said, 'You wouldn't shoot a woman who's pregnant,' and he put the gun down. After that, all the other stuff happened. I didn't lose the baby until after, when April and I were dealing with Owen's GSW."

"I'm sorry," he whispers. He's awed by how many people were willing to lay their lives down for him if they had to. And it doesn't matter if they did it out of respect or duty or friendship or love. He's grateful, but he knows his gratitude lacks purity. He can't help but let guilt build up inside him. If anyone had to die, it should have been him. He was the real eye for an eye. And now he has a heartbroken wife and a lost child because Meredith loved him more than life itself.

He hugs her, undeterred by the pull in his chest that still hurts when he turns his body. He can tell she's trying not to hold him too tightly, but he wants to be close to her right now so he pulls her in. "I love you," he says. "You know I would do it for you, right? If it ever came down to me or you?"

She nods against his shoulder and sniffs back some tears. He pulls back and looks her in the eye. "I love you," he says again, because it bears repeating. She nods again, and when he kisses her, he realizes that he needs to do this more often. He decides to start now.

Gently, he pushes her back onto the bed, ignoring the straining in his chest as he hovers over her and kisses her. He presses his lips to her neck, against that spot he knows she likes, and sucks gently while her hands are in his hair before moving down to her collarbone and chest. For a second, he feels like himself again, like he's whole and healed and he's the man that is going to make her feel good. But he's breathless before either of them has taken off any clothes, and as much as he doesn't want to admit it, he's not sure if they can even do it this way because his arms aren't going to be able to hold him up much longer.

The next thing he knows, she's trying to push him off of her. She's reluctant to touch his chest, so she puts the heel of her palm against his shoulder. "Derek," she says. "Derek, we can't."

"I'm fine," he assures her. "Do you want to get on top?" He asks as if there is a choice, but if they're going to do this, she's going to have to do most of the work.

"Derek," she says softly. "You're not ok."

And quickly, trying to split the blame between the two of them, she adds, "And I'm still bleeding a little anyway. We can't yet."

He nods. He knows she's right, but it doesn't stop the frustration from building up inside him. Quickly, the gratitude slips away, and even the guilt gets downplayed. All he can feel is anger, coursing through him as heady as adrenaline. Suddenly, he's so mad about everything that's been taken away from him that he can't see straight. Twelve dead colleagues; a dead baby; and a total inability to be a man, to comfort his wife, or to control anything, including his own body.

He's slamming his palm down on the bed, and then he's crying, and he doesn't know how he got from here to there. He's tired of waiting, tired of losing, tired of blaming anyone but whose fault it really is, the man with the gun. He feels like he's just as helpless now as he was when he was twelve years old.

"Derek? I think you need to make an appointment to see Dr. Wyatt."

He looks up at her, and he can tell she's freaked out. His wound care made his own mother, a seasoned nurse, have to leave the room; Meredith has dealt with it with no problem. She had a miscarriage three weeks ago and should probably, by all accounts, be suffering from PTSD and yet she's back at work. She's soldiered on up til now, but he's looking at her and he can tell she's as worried as she's been since the day he was shot.


	3. Chapter 3

_One of them bullets went straight for the jugular vein__  
__There were people running, a flash of light, then everything changed_

It's not like he has never seen a shrink before. You don't watch someone murder your father without talking about your feelings to a professional, at least not in suburban Connecticut, even in the 1970s.

The thing that surprises him, really, about this whole arrangement is that Meredith has seen this doctor before. She told him so awhile ago, but he tries not to think about it because he feels like he is the one who put her on a psychiatrist's couch for three months.

The day of his first appointment marks his first day back in the hospital since the shooting twenty-five days ago. He bums a ride with Meredith because he is still not allowed to drive, and hides out in his office until its time for his appointment. He tries to slip up to Psych unseen, but he still runs into a few people on his way, and he hopes that they think he is just visiting Meredith or taking care of a few work things. He doesn't want anyone to know he's going to talk to a shrink, mostly because he just doesn't want to get into it. He doesn't know what he's worried about; it's just therapy; it's supposed to _help_, and God knows nobody could blame him for needing it.

He likes the aquarium in Dr. Wyatt's office. He thinks for a second that he wouldn't mind getting something like that for the house in the woods (they refer to it that way, like it's going to be a cottage with dwarfs in it or something), and he realizes that this is the first time he has even thought about the house since the night he was shot.

"So, Dr. Shepherd," Dr. Wyatt says, sitting back in her chair like he's just here to have coffee or something. She doesn't look shrinky. With her kind but serious face and her sweater and her trousers, she actually looks like she could be one of his sisters. Then again, one of his sisters is a shrink, so he lets the comparison go. "What brings you here today?" she asks.

"Derek," he quickly corrects her, and she nods. His instinct is to lean forward when he starts talking, but his scar still pulls when he does that so he resists and sits up straighter instead. He has to say, this is a strange way to open the conversation. She works here; clearly, she knows why he is in her office now. He gets the sense that she thinks its important that he say it out loud.

"I was shot last month," he says. "During the—" he has no idea how to finish that sentence. During the shooting? Lockdown? Mass murder? He decides not to finish it at all and try to start over. "I was shot here last month."

She nods; she knows, of course, but he gets the feeling he is supposed to do most of the talking. The silence feels awkward, like she's expecting something from him, so he says a little more and waits to see if she responds. "My wife, Meredith—Meredith Grey?" Dr. Wyatt inclines her head in recognition. "She suggested that I make an appointment."

"How do you think your recovery is going?"

"Physically?"

"Yes."

"It's on schedule. A little better each day."

"What about emotionally?"

"I don't know, really," he says. "I guess that's why I'm here. It's been difficult."

"Difficult in what ways?"

She's got a notebook in her lap, but she hasn't written anything yet. He kind of wants her to. He doesn't want to feel this way anymore; she should be coming up with some kind of plan to make this go away.

"I guess the physical part has been emotionally difficult. Not being able to do the things I am used to doing."

"What kinds of things?"

"Everything. I can't work. I can't comfort my wife. I can barely walk up the stairs without losing my breath. I don't feel like myself."

"You sound angry, Derek."

"I am."

"Who are you angry with?"

He pauses, and grips his trousers with both hands, kneading the fabric. It's been almost a month, more than enough time for everything to swirl together in his mind until it's all so tangled that he can't even be sure who he's angry with anymore. He shakes his head, but says nothing, and Dr. Wyatt relents.

"Why don't you walk me through the day of the shooting? What do you remember about it?"

He tells her how he spent the first part of the day in his office, how Meredith came in and he was a little short with her, how he had absolutely no idea what was happening in his own hospital until April Kepner burst in with blood all down her front. He remembers clearly how he put the hospital on lockdown, but he is still fuzzy on the timeline, not sure how many people had been shot before him and how many had been shot after, but it doesn't seem to matter to Dr. Wyatt so he keeps going. He tells her how he walked around the hospital, not knowing what to do, and how he put Meredith and Cristina in a closet and told them he would come back when it was safe.

"So while we were on lockdown, you were walking around?"

He doesn't quite care for the way she says it, like he was being careless or silly, whether she means it that way or not. "It's my surgical wing. I had a guy killing my staff."

"What were you thinking you would do?"

He throws his hands up a little and sighs. "I don't know. But I had a guy walking around with a gun. I couldn't do nothing."

"Did you know who the shooter was?"

"Not at that point, no."

"Then why not let the police and the SWAT team deal with it? Why not stay where you were, or stay with Meredith somewhere safe?"

She is not supposed to be judging, but he feels like she is. When she puts it that way, he feels a little bit like he did the wrong thing. Of course it makes more sense to let the professionals handle someone who was armed and dangerous. He tries to remember how he felt in that moment, but it's harder now because he knows how it all ends. He knows he gets shot, so it's hard to recall what he then thought he would do if he came face to face with the gunman. He does remember that it never felt like a decision. Hiding felt wrong. Not dealing with it and trying to fix it felt almost ridiculous.

When he tells Dr. Wyatt this much, she asks again, "But why put yourself in harm's way?"

"It was my hospital." He knows he has already said it, but it's all he can come up with.

"But it turns out that you did know the shooter," she says, after jotting some things down in her black marble notebook. "A lot of your staff did. All the reports say that he was actually looking for surgeons."

"He was."

"Is it true that his wife was a patient here?"

"Yes."

"Tell me about her."

He tells her about Allison Clarke's acute hemorrhagic stroke her left temporal lobe, how massive it was, and how she did not want any extraordinary measures taken to prolong her life. But after a few seconds, he finds himself talking mostly about Gary Clarke and how distraught he was. Truthfully, he realizes, he didn't deal with his wife that much; she wasn't his patient. He only dealt with Mr. Clarke as the chief of surgery, as the one who had to make the call, break the bad news, and then get sued for doing what he was legally bound to do. So that's why, he says, Gary Clarke was looking specifically for him.

"It took him awhile to find you," she observes. He hasn't read any news coverage of the shooting, but by the way she says it, he thinks now that most of Clarke's victims were shot before he was.

"I was moving around a lot."

"But he caught up with you eventually."

He shrugs. Obviously. "I didn't recognize him at first." He volunteers this part without her asking. "I should have. I should have known right away that he was the shooter. Before I ever saw him with the gun, even."

"You only saw him for a little while on two separate occasions. I'm sure you see a lot of people over the course of a day."

"I do."

"So why do you feel like you should have known? Like you said, his wife wasn't really your patient."

"He was the only one suing for malpractice at that time. Who else could it have been?"

"Why couldn't it have been a random madman? Why did it have to be someone with a score to settle?"

"Random murders make no sense," he says immediately. It's one of the only things he has said since he's been here of which he's absolutely sure.

"Neither does any other murder," Dr. Wyatt says gently. "Just because Gary Clarke was grieving the loss of his wife doesn't justify what he did. People can grieve without going crazy."

They sit quietly for a moment, and he lets his mind wander away from the shooting. It's hard for him to picture Meredith here; they never talk about it. He wonders if Dr. Wyatt was this sedate with her or if she had to be more forceful to get her to talk. While he feels pressure to fill up the silence, he knows Meredith could sit here for hours and never say a word. For him, it's awkward not to talk when he knows it's what he is supposed to be doing.

He is starting to feel tired. He wonders if it's all because he's reliving this in more detail than he ever has before, or if it's because he's been sitting straight up for awhile now and he knows it might be hours before he can rest, or if it's some combination of the two.

"Derek," she says. "What happened when Gary Clarke found you?"

"Once I realized who he was?"

"Yes."

"I tried to reason with him. While he had the gun pointed at me, I tried to talk him down."

"What did you say to him?"

"I wanted him to look me in the eye and see that I was a human being."

"So it would be harder for him to shoot you?"

"Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly it. And I tried to empathize with him. I told him how I lost my father. It took me two and a half years to tell Meredith that, but I couldn't stop myself, I was telling him within ten seconds."

"How did your father die, Derek?"

"He was shot and killed," he says. "Right in front of me and my sister. Two guys wanted his watch and he wouldn't give it up. I was twelve."

Despite all her professionalism and steady gazes, he notices Dr. Wyatt's expression wilt just a little. "Random murders make no sense," she says quietly.

Meredith doesn't ask Derek what he and Dr. Wyatt talked about in therapy that day, and he doesn't volunteer any information himself. In fact, he eats lunch with her in the cafeteria, she drives him home, and by the time she gets back from work later that evening, it's like it never happened at all.

She can tell he's nervous about it, even though he won't admit it. For her, therapy wasn't something she ever planned on doing. She just kind of snapped one day and made an appointment on an impulse, but it still took her three tries before she would say a word. Even though Derek's venture into the world of mental health is planned and she has little to no control over it, she can't help but feel a little stressed. She wants so much for him to get something out of it.

She's not sure what she was expecting, but he sleeps fitfully that night. He doesn't wake, but she is up for about an hour in the middle of the night, watching him sleep. She's never done this before, not until the shooting, although she suspects he's watched her sleep dozens of times. The nightmare passes, but she still has to actively resist the urge to burst into Dr. Wyatt's office the next day and demand to know why she hasn't helped him yet.

The next morning, she wakes up with the beginnings of sunlight streaming in through the window, and she realizes that her bleeding has finally completely stopped. She switches the alarm off before it can beep; she won't be going back to sleep again.

Derek is calmly asleep in the bed next to her, with his arms wrapped around her and his cheek resting on the dip of her shoulder. It feels so normal that if she didn't know any better, she could believe that everything really is normal and that this nightmare they've been living for nearly a month is just that, an unreal horror.

She still has a few minutes before she really has to get up, so she lies there with him, allowing herself to remain immersed in the fantasy of what her life used to be, of what she hopes it will be again. She doesn't want to move too much for fear that she'll wake him up, but she lifts one of her hands and gently runs her fingers over his arm until she finds his hand resting against her hip. She lays her fingers over his, not squeezing his hand, but simply enjoying the warmth of his skin against hers. She tries not to think like this, but sometimes she can't help it. In moments like this one, she knows that if he had died that day, she would have never recovered. If she was still pregnant, she would have had to survive, but if she had lost him and the baby, she may as well have died too.

When she tries to slip out of his arms to get a shower, he wakes up just enough to mumble, "Don't go yet."

So she stays with him and curls back into his arms for a few minutes more. He groggily kisses her shoulder and he wakes enough to hold her hand before he dozes off to sleep again. She realizes in this moment that she's never properly thanked Cristina.

She arrives at the hospital only a few minutes late. Ever since the shooting, even though almost the whole staff is back to work, the hospital's patient census is way down. While Derek isn't here with her, she doesn't mind it as much because without as many surgeries to perform, she gets to go home at a decent hour. Still, she can't help but wonder when people in this city will stop wanting to receive their medical care anywhere but at Seattle Grace-Mercy West. Nobody on staff is as busy as they'd like to be and, like Meredith, everybody else seems to have noticed that there aren't many places to go in this building that this crime hasn't dirtied. She doesn't like to think about when this all might feel normal again. She knows that even though it gets a little better every day, normal is still a long way off.

After rounding on her patients, she finds Cristina at the nurses' station in the cardiac ward. Cristina's completely taken aback when Meredith, without saying a word, hugs her as tightly as she can.

"Are you ok?" she asks, with genuine concern and not a stitch of sarcasm.

She wants to say so much more, but all she can manage is, "Thank you." When she finally lets her go, and Cristina sees the tears in her eyes, she knows that no further explanation is required.

Derek is about fifteen minutes into his third session with Dr. Wyatt when he starts to wonder how he's supposed to know if this is helping. Next to Meredith, he has always looked like the emotionally available one by default. But if he's being honest with himself, which he supposes is the point of therapy anyway, it's not like he's ever been an open book. Which is why he thinks it's weird that he's already told so much to this perfect stranger in just two hours.

"I need to get over this," he says. "You need to give me some tools to help me."

He didn't go into this therapy thing thinking that he would be demanding things from this woman, but it's been two weeks and he doesn't feel better yet. He's put it all out there. They've gone over the shooting and the miscarriage and even backtracked into the early days of how he became a world-renowned neurosurgeon and how he became Meredith's husband. He's tired of talking, and he wants to see a treatment plan. He's got a physical therapy scheduled taped to the bathroom mirror and he doesn't understand why it is taking so long for Dr. Wyatt to come up with something similar. The muscle's healing, but his heart still feels swollen and worn out.

"I can't do that," Dr. Wyatt says.

"I'm sorry, but isn't that your job?"

"My job is to help you learn to live with what happened," she tells him. She's got a steady expression and a calm demeanor that is a page right out of Kathleen's book. "Look, Derek, you know this already. You said that you spoke with a psychiatrist after your father was murdered. You know you don't get over it."

"The therapy didn't work."

"Yes it did."

"Well it's not fixed."

"It can't be fixed," she says quietly. "Your father is dead. He was killed right in front of you and that is a terrible, terrible injustice. But it doesn't have to be completely better for therapy to have been successful, because for things like this, it simply can't be. Your therapy worked, Derek, because you moved forward with your life. You didn't shut down, you didn't drown in your grief, you didn't self-destruct or become suicidal. You became a doctor. You got married. You're still living your life. Despite everything."

This woman is exhausting him. She's not making sense and he doesn't want to do this anymore. "It's different this time," he says, exasperated that she isn't getting it or that she's getting it but she is making him spell everything out. He wishes she would just cut to the chase and say whatever magic words she's had the last two and a half weeks to come up with. Instead, all she comes up with is another question.

"Why is it different?" she asks. "Derek, tell me about the day your father died."

He sighs. It's a short story, really. He could tell her what he told Meredith and be done with the whole thing in thirty seconds, but somehow, when he starts talking, it doesn't come out that way. He tells her about other things first—fly fishing with his dad on their yearly guys-only camping trips, fighting with his sisters over what to watch on TV and then listening to Yankees games on the radio with his dad when he lost that battle. He hopes she'll understand that he is starting at the beginning even though it doesn't seem like it.

"My family didn't have a lot of money growing up. We were comfortable, I guess. You know, we never went hungry or anything, and we had a nice house. But we never had anything extravagant."

Dr. Wyatt nods. She has her pen poised over her notebook, but doesn't write anything. Every time she does this, it drives him a little crazy because he feels like he's not saying anything useful for her treatment plan.

"My dad used to own this little sporting goods store in our town, before they had all the big chain stores. I used to do my homework there after school while my mom went with my sisters to their dance classes."

She nods again, and when she doesn't write anything more than a few words, he feels like he should get to the point.

"My dad told my sister and me to go in the back when the two guys said they wanted the money from the drawer. She was there too that day. My youngest sister, Amelia. I forget why though," he says. "And my dad said it in a way—I guess every parent has that voice but my dad especially, he never yelled at us but we knew when he was serious—I knew I wasn't supposed to ask any questions, so we went in the back."

He sighs, and even though he's done this about a hundred times since he's been in this office, he looks around the room for a clock to no avail. He looks at the fish swimming in the tank for a second, and then keeps going.

"It was really calm. I could hear him taking the money out and showing it to them. Nobody was yelling or anything. I don't even know if they had the gun pointed at him by then. They asked for his watch then. I didn't want him to give it to them."

"Why not?" Dr. Wyatt asks. She's writing a lot now, and he feels like with every word, he must be getting closer to the answer. She must be figuring it out now.

"It was a gift from my mom for their fifteenth wedding anniversary. I was only ten when they celebrated it, but I still remember watching her wrap it up for him, and I remember her telling me that maybe he would give it to me one day. He never took it off since then."

"It must have been very important to him."

"It was. I remember him saying that they could take anything else in the store but to please let him keep the watch because it was a gift from his wife. He told them they could take everything else in the store, even. It happened thirty years ago, but I still remember him saying exactly that. But I guess they didn't think basketballs and fishing poles were worth much. Or they were too hard to carry. I don't know."

"How did you feel while this was going on?"

That part is harder to figure out. At first, they weren't hiding. He remembers just standing by the door and waiting for his father to give the all-clear. But within a few minutes, instinctively, he knew he should hide. He remembers crouching in the far corner with Amelia, away from sight. He remembers holding Amelia's hand, and even remembers thinking that he was going to kill her if she ever told Kathleen, Nancy, and Maggie that he did that. He remembers looking at the door that led to the alley out back and thinking that they could slip out undetected if they were quiet enough, and he specifically remembers deciding against it when he recalled that the bottom hinge squeaked when it moved.

"I wasn't scared," he says. "Or I didn't think I was until they started yelling at my dad. He kept trying to reason with them. Amy and I were hiding in the back, just waiting for him to tell us to come back out."

"But he never did," Dr. Wyatt says quietly.

He shakes his head and sighs. As much as he's gone over it in his mind countless times since it happened, and even more frequently since he was shot last month, it's been years since he's told this story in any detail to anyone.

"It didn't sound the way I thought it would, like how it sounds in the movies when someone gets shot," he says, remembering the loud, clear cracking sound. "But somehow I knew that's what happened. Amy did too. She started screaming when we heard him hit the ground, and I tried to cover her mouth with my hand because I didn't want them to come back there and shoot us too. She was only eight; she couldn't move because she was so scared, so when I thought they were gone, I peeked through the window a little to see what happened. They were still there though. One of the guys had gone behind the register and stepped over my dad's body to take the watch. I saw them take it and run away. After he was shot, we were only in the back for two minutes, maybe three. But my dad was dead by the time we got to him. He was shot in the head, so really, he probably died instantly."

"It doesn't sound like there was anything you could have done, Derek."

He shakes his head because that's not entirely true. "I could have called 911. There was a phone in the back. Or I could have stayed out there and made him give them the watch."

"Why didn't you do those things?"

"Because I was scared they would hear me. And because I knew Amy was going to do whatever I tried to do, so I knew I had to stay."

He feels panicky just thinking about what he saw that day. He remembers how he was barely able to hear the 911 operator when he finally did call because Amelia was shaking their father's arm and yelling at him to wake up, even though he died with his eyes wide open. She was covered in blood by the time the police and paramedics got there. He remembers knowing that his dad was dead; he thinks he even told the operator that when he called, but he also remembers being unable to stop screaming when one of the paramedics officially broke the news to him.

He remembers talking to the detectives and ensuing manhunt for the two suspects. He remembers his uncle selling the store for his family, and being unable to walk by that building ever again, even in adulthood. He remembers the grief and the trial, and thinking that the grief would go away with a conviction, and not understanding why it actually felt worse afterward.

"You were twelve years old, Derek," Dr. Wyatt says, and he realizes that he has been quiet for awhile now. "You were only a little boy. You did what your dad told you to do. Hiding was the right thing to do."

The anger is building up inside him, in the almost comforting, expected way it does every time he thinks about this. He doesn't know anymore how guilty he is or should be, or what he should have done and didn't do, so he says the only true thing he can think of.

"It shouldn't have happened."

"No," she replies sadly.

"They took something from me."

"Yes, they did."

"From my whole family."

She's nodding, agreeing with him. What's more, he thinks she knows he's talking about all three of them, not just the two guys who went to prison in 1979, but Gary Clarke too. He thinks she might know that he's not only talking about his father; he's talking about his innocence, his security, his child and his childhood.

"How can I move on?" he asks again. He's almost begging this time.

"You know how to move on, Derek," she says. She sounds sure, which he figures is a good thing. At least one of them is. "What happened to the two men who killed your dad?"

"Life in prison without parole for the one who actually pulled the trigger. The other was in jail for 15 years."

"Does that feel like a just punishment to you?"

"No."

"What about Gary Clarke? Does it make you feel any better to know that he's dead?"

"No. Nothing feels like enough."

"After your dad died, when do you remember feeling like things were getting better?"

"I don't know," he says. There wasn't a specific moment, but eventually, when he went back to school and spent afternoons hanging out with Mark, there were instances. They surprised him, the way they crept up on him when he would realize, 'My dad is dead and I haven't thought about that in fifteen minutes. In two hours. In one day.' When he thinks about it, even now, he still feels broken-hearted. "It never feels better," he says.

But somewhere along the way, at least until this happened, he stopped feeling consumed by it. He doesn't have to say it, but she picks up on it anyway.

"But you're still here," she says. "You kept living." She's said it before, but it makes a little bit more sense now for some reason. "So you know what to do, Derek. You keep on living. It sounds stupid and simple, but I swear it works. You're still all the things you were before this happened. So be Meredith's husband. Be the doctor you want to be. Keep going. That's how you move on."

For the past three weeks, she purposely has not scheduled a single surgery for the time that Derek is with Dr. Wyatt. When he first started going, she thought he might like to stay at the hospital for a few hours afterward, just to start to get back some of his old life, but that has not been the case at all. He comes to work with her in the morning, but as soon as his session is over, just before lunch, he comes to find her and she takes him home.

He tries to be cheerful about therapy, but she can tell he's getting frustrated. She still doesn't know how her own breakthrough actually happened, but it felt like it took forever, and she worries that might be how it is for him too. Neither of them are the most patient people in the world.

When he finds her, he usually asks something like, "Are you ready to go?" or "Do you want to eat lunch here or at home?" He usually smiles, or at least tries to. Today, when he finds her, he looks almost beaten down. He doesn't smile, and all he says is, "I want to go home now."

He never minds if she has to finish a few things up before they leave, but today she doesn't even suggest that. She just gathers her things as quickly as she can, and they go to the car.

She tries to steal quick glances at him while she's driving, but he's looking straight ahead and at that angle, his expression is hard to read. She floats her hand out to the center console, but his are firmly in his lap, so she doesn't reach any further.

Her first instinct is to tell him that he doesn't have to go back if he doesn't want to. But she knows that maybe this is the start of something. Up until now, she wasn't sure if it was just the way it had to work for her, but it seems like maybe therapy has to strip you raw before you can start to heal.

She doesn't ask what they talked about today; she never does. And up until now he's never told her. But they're about a quarter of the way home when he says, "I was there when my dad was killed. Did I ever tell you that part?"

"No." Her heart breaks for him, but almost instantly, she feels like she understands him better.

"Yeah. It happened in his store. I used to do my homework there after school."

"Derek," she sighs.

He's not crying. His voice isn't even broken. But he starts telling her what happened to him when he was twelve years old. It doesn't take him long, maybe five minutes, even though he stops and starts a few times and speaks in disjointed sentences rather than in a continuous narrative.

He tells her about hiding with Amelia in the back room of the store, with a hand clamped over her mouth. He tells her how he had to step over his father's body the same way his murderer had so he could get to the phone to call for help, how he got blood on his shoes, and how Amelia had blood all down her front because she got down on the ground to be next to their father but he couldn't bear to do the same.

It's not difficult for her to put the pieces together and understand how terrified he was. There's another part that she doesn't say, because she doesn't think it's appropriate and she knows he wouldn't be able to appreciate it right now, but she feels like she now knows one of the most personal things any doctor can know about another—why he became a physician—and one of the most personal things a wife can know about a husband—the exact moment that he became a man.

He's stopped talking now, but she doesn't know what to say. She reaches her hand out again, and this time, he takes it. As soon as she can, she starts driving in another direction. She barely gives the decision any conscious thought, and as soon as she makes the first turn, she hopes it is the right thing to do.

"I want to go home, Meredith," he says as soon as they veer off course.

"I know," she assures him. "We are."

She takes him away from the city, driving with one hand until they wind up a gravelly road, through the trees, and up to a clearing, where she parks the car.

Everything about their land looks the same as it always did. The trailer that, before the shooting, he had been meaning to sell is still there. It's cloudy today, but the view is still stunning. They haven't skinny-dipped in the lake in a long time, but she knows that the path that starts a few yards to her left will lead them there.

The only difference now is that she can picture the house so clearly in her mind, even though they haven't broken ground yet. Before the shooting, they were still trying to perfect everything. Just before it happened, they were almost ready. It's so much clearer to her now than the candlelit outline she once made. She can see the wrap-around porch and the tall windows; she can imagine what it will be like to stand on that porch with him, maybe with some red wine, maybe with some kids playing in the grass, and watch the sun go down over the city.

They get out of the car, and when he stands there for a minute, she wonders if he's imagining the same things. She walks over to him, and when he looks at her, he doesn't smile, but he does look a little relieved.

She smiles for the both of them. "Do you want to take a walk?"

He nods, she takes his hand, and they set off for the path. She wouldn't have done this if she wasn't sure his body could handle it, but his steps finally feel sure and so does she.  
They're quiet together for awhile. But after a few minutes, when they're almost at the lake, he says, "Remember when we used to walk Doc here?"

"Yeah. He was such a good dog."

"He was," Derek agrees. Then, wistfully, he adds, "Never thought I'd think those were the easy days."

"Me either," she says.

When they get to the lake, they just kind of stand there a little stupidly. When she decided to bring them here, she didn't think much beyond that and now she's not sure what to do. The muddy sand under their feet is wet, and he doesn't try to sit, so they just keep standing there looking at the water.

"My mom tried to kill herself when I was five," she says. She hadn't planned on telling him this, at least not now, but the words are coming out and all she can do is hope that it's the right thing to say. "She slit her wrists in front of me."

He's stunned when he looks at her. She hopes that she hasn't taken him away from thinking about fly fishing, or playing with Doc, or kissing under the moonlight surrounded by hundreds of candles.

"I never knew that," he says quietly.

"I only ever talked about it in therapy," she says. "No one knows, not even Cristina."

He nods. She's shown him pictures of herself as a young child, from a shoebox they stumbled upon when they were moving boxes around in the attic, but they really never talk about each others' childhoods. Now she knows why.

"I know it's not the same," she says. "It's not the same as what happened to you at all. But I wanted you to know that I can kind of understand."

"Thank you," he says.

She waits, and suddenly, even though the air is still cool, she has the urge to wade in to the water. She imagines many more days here—maybe with another dog, maybe with another baby—with picnic lunches and bare feet in the squelchy, muddy sand.

She's almost forgotten what it's like. But when she looks up at him and asks, "Wanna go skinny-dipping?" and he laughs, she feels relief for the first time in six weeks.


	4. Chapter 4

_She loved him like no one before_  
_And it was good to be alive_  
_But sometimes that can slip away as fast_  
_As any fingers through your hands_  
_So you let time forgive the past_  
_And go and make some other plans  
_

At the age of forty-one, Derek Shepherd finally masters the art of the text message. And he sends them to her. A lot. Not that she minds; she knows just how bored he is, now beginning his third month at home. Really, she's thankful for the messages because they must mean he feels better, or at least good enough to care about things enough to compress them into 160 characters or less.

He does a fair amount of flirting via text, which is partly just a stupid kind of cute, but mostly a huge relief in ways that she can't fully articulate to herself. Primarily, though, he uses his phone to ask her questions. A few days after their trip to their land, she came home from work to find him in bed, with blueprints spread across the covers and his laptop open on her pillow. Since then, the text messages have come every day, while she's at the hospital and he continues to recuperate.

She's finishing up rounds when her phone vibrates in her pocket. _We liked the full-length windows for the living room, right? _She thinks of the sunsets they'll see when she replies, _Yes_. Two pictures come through next, quickly, one right after the other, followed by, _Which one?_

Even though her idea of a perfect home has very little to do with what it looks like, she wants to be there with him, to lean against him in bed and look at house plans all day long. He is planning their future, dreaming about it, even if it's just in terms of the smaller things, like French doors leading from their living room to their back porch.

He's a little quieter today, and she wonders if he's all right, but then remembers that he is meeting with their architect this morning. _Do you want a door from the garage to the mud room? _he asks a few hours later. She has no idea what a mud room is, she writes in her reply, but she's fine with putting a door wherever. He texts back something about a little hallway to leave muddy shoes, or at least that's what his mother called it. Almost immediately, without giving it conscious thought, her mind drifts to picture Derek's fishing gear, peeled off and left there, with other boots, wet and caked with dirt, maybe big enough for a two- or three-year-old, lined up next to his.

She has got to stop thinking like this. It hurts a little less now, and has turned into more of a longing feeling than a hard knot of grief. But still, it freaks her out that she thinks about things like muddy boots now and she doesn't know quite what to do with herself when it happens.

They haven't talked about trying to have a baby since this all happened two months ago. In some ways, it's just easier not to. Even though it's been eight weeks and she is, by all accounts, healed, the intensity of what she felt—what she is still feeling—surprises her. It's easier to keep it to herself until she's sure that Derek's all right, until she's sure she knows what to say.

The next text comes during lunch, and conveniently, it's about Cristina. She can't tell if he's kidding or serious when he asks, _Does the guest room need a double closet? _He calls it the guest room because he needs to call it that in order to stay sane. She calls it Cristina's room because they both know that is technically what it is; she is the only guest they plan on having with any regularity.

She smiles, and puts her fork down in her plastic salad bowl. "Derek wants to know if you're moving in," she says. Cristina raises an eyebrow. "He wants to know if your room needs a double closet. I can't tell if he's kidding or if he's actually worried."

"You can tell him to stand down," Cristina assures her.

She calls him instead of typing a reply this time, just because she can. "Cristina wants to know if you're ok with giving her some of the closet space in our room. She doesn't think a double closet is going to be enough."

"Haha," he replies.

"How's house planning going?"

"It's good. I think I'll have made all the changes we want by the time you get home tonight. Do you want to look at the plans and then if you think they're all right, we'll send them to Artie in the morning?"

"Yeah, that sounds good."

"So we don't need the double closet in the guest room?"

"No, we don't," she says, laughing.

There will be two other bedrooms, but he doesn't ask about those. They both know what they will be used for, and they don't have to say it. She doesn't know when they will answer the question of 'when.' But then she thinks of closed doors and white, unpainted walls and dust piling up in the corners, and her heart twinges the same way she imagines that Derek's does, like she has a scar there too.

He has never felt more alive than he does right now. There is a fair amount of fumbling, and lots of questions and reassurances, from both of them, that it's ok, it feels good. He is not sure that this time the best he's ever had because, in all honesty, he and Meredith have a fairly impressive track record. But she can touch him without hurting him, without being afraid that she will break him, and because of that alone, this feels like absolute bliss.

She's all soft curves and warmth as her body rubs against his. With every second that passes, she looks less and less heartbroken, and he can feel his anger and his terror slipping away. He finally feels confident, or at least like a real person again. It hasn't been that long, really, but in a way, it feels like a lifetime has passed since he has gotten to touch her like this.

She closes her eyes when he puts his mouth on her. He doesn't bite, even though he knows she doesn't mind. Instead, he takes his time, kissing her lips and her neck and her breasts. She rises up to meet him and cries out when his fingers sink lower, and after a minute or two, he doesn't want to wait anymore.

She looks the same, and feels the same, but the past two months have taught him that she is not the same. She doesn't have a physical scar like he does, but he knows she has needed time to heal too. "Are you ok?" he asks again.

"I'm ok," she nods, breathless.

She sighs as he sinks into her, and he has to rethink things for a second. It's not just bliss. They're alive. They're together. It's ecstasy.

He drives himself to and from therapy now, and he no longer comes home withered and beaten down after a session with Dr. Wyatt. He is nearly three months post-op, so he is no longer in constant pain, though he is working hard to regain his old levels of stamina. The resumption of frequent sex has helped with that. Aside from not being back to work yet, he is now just about as independent as he ever was. Last week, they broke ground on their house. She's sure the therapy is helping Derek, but she thinks these other things are healing him from the outside in just as much as the therapy is.

She is not sure if she's feeling better because she has actually grieved and healed herself, or because she feels so much relief that Derek finally seems to be recovering. When she tries to dissect it, she realizes that it doesn't matter. Maybe it just feels better because it is better. There was a moment, about a week ago when her period returned, that she felt sad, almost grief-stricken again. She was kind of hoping that the world would just right itself on its own for once, that she wouldn't have to try harder than she already has to put everything back the way it was. The acuity of the feeling passes with time though, and she chalks it up to PMS. Overall, which she supposes is really what matters, she feels much better.

Derek calls her at lunchtime to tell her that he has gone grocery shopping and will be cooking dinner tonight. He wants to know what time he can expect her home, and for a second, she smiles and thinks to herself that she has a wife or something now. She misses him at work, but she wonders now that he's feeling more like his old self, if he misses the hospital just as much.

He calls again at seven o'clock, when she is fumbling for her keys in the rain outside the hospital, and by the time she finds the keys and her phone, she's missed his call. She puts her Jeep in reverse and backs out of her spot with her phone wedged between her shoulder and cheek as she calls him back.

"Hey, can you pick up some parmesan cheese on your way home?" he asks. "I forgot it this morning."

"Yeah. Do we need anything else?"

"No, just the cheese. Are you leaving soon?"

"Right now, actually," she says. She shifts the car into drive and leaves the parking lot. "Did you get laundry detergent?"

He pauses. "Make it the parmesan and the detergent."

She smiles, and tells him she will see him when she gets home.

For her, the feeling of domesticity is relatively new. Who knew she would actually like standing in the check-out line at the grocery store, with a jug of laundry detergent crooked in one arm and a tub of parmesan cheese in the other hand?

She loves coming home to him. She loves that they do their laundry together. She loves that, in every sense of the expression, they are building a home for themselves. She supposes that it's normal to feel these things. But she also knows that for her, feeling normal is extraordinary.

While she is waiting to pay, she pulls a _Cosmo_ from the rack and flips through it absentmindedly. After a minute though, she finds herself much more interested in the customer in front of her. This woman is younger than she is, maybe by five years or so, but she has a wedding ring on her finger and a son on her hip. The baby can't be more than six or seven months old, and he's drooling on his mother's shirt while she loads her groceries onto the belt with one hand. She bends down to grab a gallon of milk from the cart and he fusses a little at having to move with her, but when she hoists him up a little and pats his back, he settles down.

While his mother handles her transaction with her free hand, the baby picks his head up over her shoulder and watches Meredith. She's not sure what to do; she didn't know someone so little could stare at her with such intensity. She smiles at him, just because she's not sure what else to do. He is a person, after all, and even though he's toothless and non-verbal, she still feels this weird tension and, like with anyone else, smiling (however awkwardly) seems like the best way to break it.

He smiles back at her—a wide, open-mouthed grin that's almost a coo—before bashfully burying his face in his mother's neck. Her expression goes slack, but when he peeks up at her again (she didn't know babies' eyes could twinkle), she realizes that he's playing with her.

When he laughs, his mother turns around and smiles at Meredith, but then they're gone. She pays for the cheese and the laundry detergent, and by the time she gets back to her car, she's got a lump in her throat. And then she's crying and driving, and wondering how it's possible to both understand herself so well and not at all at the same time.

He comes back to the hospital today, even though he doesn't have a meeting with Dr. Wyatt and he isn't officially back to work for another week and a half. Meredith doesn't know that he's here; he drove here separately, hours after she left for work, and he won't be staying long.

Richard is in his office, or he was in Richard's office—it's confusing, but Richard has been made interim chief of surgery in his absence. Derek had no part in the decision-making, but it's a choice he agrees with, especially during this time of turmoil and hospital-wide grief. In this moment, though, with Richard behind the desk and Derek standing in front of him, it feels normal. He recognizes all of his personal affects on the desk and around the room, and appreciates Richard's courtesy in not moving them, even though he doesn't feel like he belongs there anymore anyway.

He knocks on the door, and Richard looks up, surprised to see him. "Derek," he says. "Welcome back."

He wonders if Richard had to grow in to being chief-like. He looks so natural stepping out from behind the desk, whereas he didn't feel like he was starting to hit his stride until just before he was shot.

"How do you feel?" Richard asks.

"Still a work in progress, but much better."

"Very glad to hear it, Derek. It'll be great to have you back at work."

"Thanks."

"So what can I do for you?"

He sighs. His relationship with Richard has been strained for months, maybe for years if he's being honest with himself. But now that he's been on the other side of all this, he feels like he understands Richard a little better.

He doesn't mean for it to, but everything—or at least much more than he meant to say—comes pouring out. Nothing about this job is what he thought it would be, and he felt that way long before he was nearly killed. Sometimes, he did not even feel like a doctor anymore. He tells Richard how, after all these years of practicing medicine, he still felt excited about coming into work most days, until he took over as chief. He tells him that he sometimes feels jealous of Meredith because still feels the way he used to about medicine. He doesn't like the job, frankly, not nearly as much as he thought he would. The power was fun for awhile, but he misses surgery, practicing medicine, and being the doctor he used to be. He tells Richard that he's trying to put his life back together (Richard nods at this, and Derek is sure that he understands now), and this is how he wants to start.

"I want you to take the job back," he says. "If you don't want it, I understand, but either way, I'm stepping down. I talked to the board, and you're my choice to take the job."

When he stops talking, he thinks to himself that maybe it wasn't the best strategy—reminding Richard of all the things he hated about the job and then asking him to take it off his hands. But then Richard tells him that he's flattered, and, for what it's worth, he thinks Derek did a remarkable job as chief. But he would be happy to take the job back if that's what Derek wants. Derek thinks to himself that maybe a lot of it has to do with loving what you know. It's the only way he can explain how Richard seems to share his sense of relief right now.

The following week, Derek walks into the hospital without the latent sense of dread. He stops in to say hello to Richard, but then pulls on his white coat and consults on a case. He schedules a craniotomy for that afternoon.

They are still not talking about it, even though she thinks that maybe they have some sort of implicit understanding since they have been having sex without birth control for a month. Still, they don't talk about what that means, or how they made the non-decision to do it in the first place. Now that a few weeks have passed, she thinks that what probably happened was that they just missed each other a lot, and when one thing led to another, they just forgot about condoms and pills and everything else. She supposes that most people would say that's how accidents happen. Now that it's been going on for awhile, she can't really call it an accident anymore but she feels like if she brings it up, it will turn into a thing. She worries that there might be a misunderstanding, that one of them might not want what the other wants.

Derek is always tired after work now. Well, she shouldn't say _always _because it's only been five days and the schedule is grueling for anyone, let alone someone who has just recovered from a gunshot wound and major heart surgery. Anyway, he has been too tired for sex, so now that she has gone a few days without it, naturally, the thought crosses her mind.

After dinner, they lie together on the couch with the TV volume turned low. Alex is at the gym and Lexie is on call, so it's just the two of them at home. With her head on his shoulder, she can feel his heart beating under her hand, and for awhile, he's so quiet that she thinks he has fallen asleep. It would be hard to move without disturbing him, so she stays there, wedged between his warm body and the back of the couch, thinking about condoms and the risks she is taking.

"Do you want to go furniture shopping this week?" he asks. He inhales deeply, and curls an arm around her.

"I thought you were asleep," she says.

"No, just thinking."

"Me too."

"About furniture?" he asks. She can't see his face, but she can tell he's smiling.

"Not really."

"What are you thinking about?"

"Well, now I'm thinking about furniture," she says. "I didn't think it was time to do that yet."

"It's not, really. But we could always just start looking, even if it's going to be at least a few more months before the house is ready. Or we could start with paint colors if you want."

"Maybe paint colors first," she says. "We don't need to be out shopping the weekend after your first week back at work."

"I have a catalogue of lighting fixtures too. We could order Thai and look at sconces."

"What the hell is a sconce?" she asks, trying not to laugh, "And why do you have a catalogue dedicated to lighting fixtures?"

"I was bored."

"So you got yourself a catalogue of lighting fixtures?"

"I have hardwood floor and carpet samples too. Plus blinds, molding, windows, doors, railings, and cabinetry…maybe a few others. I can't remember right now. But there's a stack of them in my nightstand drawer."

"Really?" she says. "So how many paint chips do you have in your possession right now?"

He laughs, but she's not making fun of him and he's not embarrassed. "A few dozen at least."

"We should get you your own show on HGTV."

"How do you know about HGTV?" he asks incredulously.

"You're not the only one who was on bed rest this year."

She wonders when it slipped in, this relative peace that just a few weeks ago seemed impossible. During quiet evenings like this, when they lie together and talk about their house and their future, sometimes a few minutes go by when she forgets that this happened to them at all. She still feels like the same person she always was. When she remembers, and then reflects, she thinks that maybe she can separate the two now because that's what healing is.

"So paint colors?" he asks.

"Yeah."

He kisses the top of her head. "What are you thinking?"

She makes a conscious choice not to bring up what she was thinking about before. She's happy now, and she doesn't want to complicate things by bringing up how they're playing with fire. So she talks to him about other things that she never thought she would care about, things like paint colors.

They spend the rest of the evening like this, discussing how weird it is that most paint colors are named after food and how they feel a little silly saying that their living room will be the color of Chianti. They talk until they're both sleepy, about pumpkin and chilé and crème and eggshell and malted milk and honey. When she lets herself close her eyes, resigned to the fact that she will be sleeping on the couch tonight, at least until she gets uncomfortable enough to move upstairs, she thinks about their kitchen and bathrooms and even the foyer and the mud room. The colors warm her up and sink her into contentment.

It doesn't matter about the other stuff right now. It's just nice to be happy, and even though it's complicated in her head, if it's not complicated between the two of them, then that's something to celebrate. She can put off this discussion for a few more weeks, and they can keep going the way they are because she's pretty sure she's fine with it and if he's not, he'll realize it soon enough and bring it up on his own.

She's sure he's about to fall asleep too, but then he asks in a thick voice, so sleepy that she's not sure he's fully aware of what he's saying, "What color do you want the baby's room to be?"

Exactly six months after the shooting, Derek smashes a bottle of champagne against one of the outside corners of their house. The builders haven't finished it yet, but enough of the frame and walls are up so that it looks like an actual dwelling rather than a bunch of popsicle sticks.

There's no special reason as to why he picked today to do this, although he supposes that the six month anniversary of still being alive should be occasion enough. So far, the house is exactly what he always imagined it would be. They can't go inside yet because the contractor told him that the stairs aren't finished, but they can come here on chilly autumn evenings and celebrate where they are.

The trailer is gone and the house's electrical work hasn't been started yet, so they're in the dark except for a few of the dozens of leftover white pillar candles that Meredith brought with them. She sits on the porch, her flushed cheeks glowing in the candlelight, and he's sure she has never looked more beautiful, or more at home, than she does right now.

"How are we going to pick up all the pieces?" she asks.

For a second, he's not sure what she's talking about. He almost tells her that they _did _pick up the pieces, but then he realizes that she's talking about the bottle and not the other things. He's at a loss with the bottle dilemma too. He thought this thing through enough to bring a second bottle of champagne for them to drink, but he didn't consider the difficulty of picking up shards of glass in the dark.

"We'll hold the candlelight over it later," he says. "Let's worry about it when we're ready to leave."

He joins her on the porch, and she passes the second bottle of champagne to him. The cork is somewhere in the grass, next to the dumpster of construction rubbish. He takes a long drink and when he finishes, she puts her hand on his knee and her head on his shoulder.

"I can't believe we're almost ready," she says quietly. Silently, he agrees. There were many moments over the past few years that he was sure that this day, the day that he could have the floorboards of his real home under him, would never come.

"Did Alex and Lexie get some new roommates?" he asks. She doesn't say so, but he knows she worries about them, and how much harder it will be to make sure they're all right when she's somewhere else.

"They're still looking. I think they're being too picky."

"Nothing wrong with being picky," he says. "I have to say, I think how quiet it will be here might freak me out at first. I've kind of gotten used to the frat house."

"Well, maybe it won't be quiet here that much longer," she says.

"I hope so."

They've been trying, both unofficially and officially for three months. Nothing's happened yet, but when the painters come (in three weeks, if everything stays on schedule), the room next to the master bedroom will be colored a light butter yellow. They don't discuss this hypothetical baby very often, but every time they do, and every other time he thinks about it, he is filled with so much faith and so much joy that he wonders what it will feel like in the moment when he actually gets to hold this child in his arms.

They talk and sip champagne from the bottle until it's too cold to stay any longer, and if they did, he would be too tipsy to drive back to Meredith's house. Before they leave, they stand in front of the house, both of them with glass shards in one hand and candles in the other, and take one last look at their house. He allows himself to imagine the days they'll spend here, with these candles on their mantle and on their kitchen counter and in their bedroom. He imagines a life lived in this house. Even though he doesn't have a key in his hand yet, he can look at the building's frame and he knows that the future is taking shape.


End file.
